We’ve recently teamed up with entrepreneur Tom Church’s meet up group The London Start Ups to host an event to explore the trend of Big Data and looking at ways businesses could create opportunities. We invited renowned entrepreneur Emma Jones MBE to share her expertise with an audience of budding, beginner and established entrepreneurs.

Emma began her talk by deconstructing the logic of constantly associating entrepreneurs with failure: “The more we talk about failure in this country, the less people will want to start a business: in this country 50% of people want to start a business, what puts them off is fear of failure”

Three tips for starting a new business

Working 5-9: keep hold of the day job & work nights and weekends. This gives you security of salary and time to build your confidence and cashflow in your businesses. Emma also added that it’s a great opportunity to build new skills which your current employer will value.

Work on a budget: when you are a start up with money, people expect you to pay, when you are a start up with no money, you get stuff for free – learn to beg, borrow & barter. This can include reaching out to Big Businesses that will have the resources that you need whether that’s people, intellectual property, or space.

Find Your Niche: the businesses that do well are the ones that understand their niche. Having a niche helps to keep costs marketing costs low and loyalty levels high as you’ll have an in-depth understanding of your consumer’s habits, likes and dislikes.

Three tips for growing your business

Go Global at the earliest opportunity: there is an international market of consumers ready to spend more money on products and who are especially interested in produce from UK, and there are plenty of schemes who can help you to find your trading feet internationally .

Work with Big Businesses & Government: businesses are opening their supply out to small businesses more, and working with startups is becoming more attractive – and the government has pledged to procure 25% of their products and services from small businesses by 2015.

Focus on what you do best and outsource the rest: its sounds simple, but makes perfect sense. Working this way means your business will remain more efficient, nimble and progress at faster pace than it would if you had to do everything yourself – it’s important to make the most of the support around you.

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Digital Content Manager

Tori is Digital Content Manager at Sage UK, and a Scout Leader in her spare time. Passionate about online content, user experience, search and analytics, she has worked in digital marketing for 6 years in various roles covering e-commerce, B2C and B2B